Wednesday, November 30, 2011

With two popular TV series based on fairy tales and lots of buzz about fairy tale movies in the making, comic book stores are looking to grab a piece of the pie during this season-of-selling.

In this article - written for Black Friday sales - a number of comic book stores tell what - beside many, many copies of Fables - these stores are stocking up with and recommending for fairy tale fans.

See this article HERE and scroll down for the lists of recommendations. There may be a few ones here you haven't heard of.

"Our latest collections are right on trend so it seemed only natural to promote and showcase them in a way that is equally of the moment. Modern takes on fables and fairy tales are a major theme this year in movies, social events and design, so we decided to explore this mysterious world and delve into the darker side of some of the best-known children’s fairy tales. The result is a visually stunning, dramatic and edgy backdrop which shows off our new collections to spectacular effect.

Without doubt, the most intriguing thing about the floors would have to be this ad campaign using well known fairy tales (and their characters) to highlight the floor.

Goldilocks

Beauty & the Beast

The interesting thing is only one of these fairy tales is usually associated with floors (ie. Cinderella) but I thought they did a very nice job of integrating the idea of Goldilocks ending up on the floor and using Hansel & Gretel's forest path.

We all know the evil things done in fairy tales have their counterparts in the real world and although awful it doesn't seem quite as chilling as when it's paralleled with the present day.

The NBC series Grimm is filming on location in Portland, Oregon - by all accounts a perfect locale for the subject matter of dark fairy tales with its terrain, forests and moody-weather atmosphere. As it turns out there's a much darker reason it works too.

This article, written by a local, shows both the excitement of having Grimm being filmed there but also how close to home the subject matter has already been for the town.

From the article, after a brief description of the crimes in the pilot episodes:

Kyron Horma

Why is this chilling? This is where reality intersects with the TV show. In the spring of 2010, a young boy named Kyron Horman went missing from our city of Portland. The school he vanished from? Skyline Elementary. He has never been found and the mystery surrounding his disappearance still has the Portland police bureau following tips and leads.

I see Grimm has been picked up for another season on NBC. The Brothers Grimm wrote 209 dark tales back in the early 19th Century. It seems we are in for a lot of these modern age fairy tales, too dark for children but just right for grown humans that like a little suspense. And I for one, will be looking for a little reality in each show.

You can read the full article with its real life parallels with the series, HERE.

Tuesday, November 29, 2011

This is a beautifully done comparison of Snow White's fairy tale coma versus the her Prince Charming's real-world coma. (Click on image to see full size.) Though the original graphics are from the show, of course, the way of seeing and presenting them is this photographer/journalist's own.

I do so love seeing what the concepts in Once Upon A Time are inspiring and hope the network has no problem with people manipulating these sorts of graphics. Seeing creations like this make me want to revisit the show even more and do a great job of creating further underground interest in the show. Kudos to the "jess"*, the artist for this one.

There are a few lovely blogs now dedicated to Once Upon A Time graphic tributes and gif collections: you can find one HERE and another HERE. I particularly like all the parallel images -the 'mirror concepts, if you will. :)

Here are some random images and gifs that caught my eye:

It appears the gifs are not always appearing in their correct formatting so please click HERE and HERE to see how they were originally placed.

* This artist's blog has quite a number of artfully arranged image captures for different shows. The colors are tweaked and the images cropped according to taste and it all works so beautifully. If you enjoy graphic design this blog is definitely worth a browse. The other two blogs are dedicated to Once Upon A Time and Snow White/Charming - they highlight some of the lovely graphics and photography that's so easy to miss when you're watching the actual show.

Monday, November 28, 2011

This lovely piece of fan art popped up yesterday, showing the dual role and real-world dilemma of Once Upon A Time's Snow White beautifully. I had to share. I'm looking forward to seeing what else people create as a result of this series.
Source: tooyoungtofight

I meant to put this up before this week's airing, since it covers the Rumpelstiltskin & Cinderella episode, but it's still fun to read through, especially as we now know more than we did. Don't forget to keep reading through the comments - there are at least a couple of pages. That's the only place I see anyone bringing up the point of names being so important to Rumpelstiltskin and how that may have something to do with why Henry hasn't deduced just who Mr. Gold is yet.

Of course there are questions (and issues) they didn't ask that I'd love to see discussed but perhaps another time... :)

You'll see there's quite a variety of people watching too: Disney fans, people who only know Disney versions of fairy tales, classic fairy tale aficionados and also regular people who barely have any passing acquaintance with fairy tales but are really enjoying all the drama-with-mirror-world layering. One thing I really like about the series is how it's clearly appealing to a wide range of people.

I do hope they continue this round table. Reading various summary reviews online, in which they mostly re-hash that week's plot with a couple of conjectures added for good measure, isn't nearly as interesting as hearing what questions and topics the series is causing people to think about.

I'm not sure how many of my old readers realize I'm posting again but for the few that are following again - thank you! and I have some questions for you:

What aspects of Once Upon A Time are you interested in?

And the all-time big question:

Even though Emma Snow doesn't (currently) have a fairy tale counterpart we know there are things about her that are currently hidden. Who do you think she will turn out to be? What will be her big reveal?

I only heard this cover of Little Red Riding Hood for the first time recently and am so disappointed there isn't a full version of this song! All that was arranged and recorded is heard in the ad. (Argh!)

Note: The 7Up commercial itself (from 2000 I think) is suggestive, as you would expect in any modern update of LRRH, and Red herself is, er, rather assertive. Considering she's being stalked by a wolf, I'm OK with it but not everyone may feel the same way.

From the comments:

Rosnick Mackinnon was the music house that did the arrangment and used session musicians to record. Vocals by an﻿ actress, but not the one in the spot.

In case you didn't know Amanda Seyfried (star of the recent Red Riding Hood movie and playing the daughter in the movie musical version of Mama Mia) also covered this song recently. You can hear that HERE.

It's Sunday and it's that Once Upon A Time time of the week. Yay! Gotta love new fairy tale retellings coming to your living room twice a week these days. :)

Storybrooke's resident therapist Archie Hopper (aka Jiminy Cricket) gets a lot of screen time this week and (if they must have use Jiminy Cricket to start with) I initially thought there was a lot of story potential in having his real life persona turn out like this. If you're interested, there's a little article interviewing the actor on his dual role HERE and a longer one on Jiminy Cricket's personal journey HERE. (We also get some further insight into Ruby/Red Riding Hood's character in the article too.)

However, if this preview clip of tonight's episode is any indication, I'm not sure Jiminy Cricket is someone I want to be talking my troubles over with, or sending my child to. I'm already cringing over the "real mother" smack down between Regina and Emma (this aspect has a high squick factor for more than a few parents out there) but now we have a therapist telling a kid he's crazy... :/

The episode this week is called "That Still Small Voice" so I'm hoping we'll see Jiminy/Archie looking into his own heart and finding a still-small-something in the midst of this episode to redeem it. There are a lot of references to "finding your conscience" so fingers crossed. In the midst of all this there are also some dark hints out there about what's to come HERE. (>>> NOTE: this article may have spoilers!!)

Here's a second (spoiler-free) and action-packed sneak peek of tonight's show:

And yes, for all my criticism, you know I'll be watching. I think the treatment/interpretation of archetypes is fascinating and an interesting reflection on how our society views them. For every bit of squick in the fairy tale shows (yes, both of them), there always manages to be one or more things that are worth coming to the party to see first hand.

In Once Upon A Time, there is a little something for everyone: real world reflections of fairy tale tropes and characters, fairy tale fantasy sequences, mysteries, drama, action (nothing like a sinkhole/abandoned mine suddenly appearing to get the adrenalin pumping) and a little swashbuckling now and then. One thing is for certain - the more people see of this show, the more people are talking fairy tales. That alone is reason to tune in.

I found this a while ago and since Snow White is on everyone's mind right now I thought I'd post it.

Although the article writer is a little loose on the source material (there's a definite lean toward Disney here) you can see how they followed the idea through and have it actually make good advice for those looking to build a social media presence they are happy with by using their own "magic mirror".

I'm curious as to what sparked the idea to link the two ideas in the first place, especially considering the author is obviously someone who doesn't read fairy tales much. I can't help but feel they could have gotten a lot more useful advice out of the tale if they'd actually looked up the text.

Saturday, November 26, 2011

I'm ashamed to say it has taken me A VERY LONG TIME to give the cartoon series Adventure Time a go. Initially I thought the designs were ugly*** and expected crude/cruel humor, awful/hard-to-watch animation and a high cringe factor of subject matter but I was completely wrong. Not only was I wrong but the mythic and creative aspects have made sure Adventure Time is now being DVR'd in our house as often as possible. I now completely understand how this independent show built a strong underground following and is getting more and more popular over time.

Although Adventure Time will not be to everyone's taste I was happily surprised by the high degree of both creativity and continuous myth-based references throughout. Finn the Human and his magical dog Jake are not only decent and sweet characters but incredibly heroic and venture into all kinds of different worlds (eg. Candy Kingdom, the Underworld etc) rescuing those in need while figuring out what is good and what is not. They're also incredibly funny*. :)

Another nice surprise was seeing how the designs actually made sense when animated (commercials don't give you the correct impression at all) and how whimsical it all became.

The Thanksgiving special, titled "Thank You", shows just how sweet and mythic this show can be. (It has a snow golem and fire wolves for goodness sake! There's a summary of the episode HERE in case I can't convince you to watch and be surprised. PS. I dearly want a fire wolf pup now.) My son, along with me, has watched the episode 4 times again today and still isn't sick of it. The episode is making waves around the internet with how touching it's proven to be.

Just watch**. You'll thank me. :)

* You can expect a degree of boy humor (because that's who the main character is) and the episodes, as with all shows, differ in their appeal but personally, I have enjoyed more of them - and found a lot of fresh mythic references throughout - than not. I think a key element in tolerating these aspects is that in this show, they are not mean spirited at all. the characters are clearly have hearts of gold. Very much like the naive yet pure-hearted Jacks of fairy tales.** I don't know if this will be available online for very long so take advantage of the freebie viewing while you can. *** The design work on the show is actually top notch! The commercial-editing just doesn't do justice to the look. The pace and spirit of the show backs up the wonderfully naive-like approach to the character looks and it actually works so well, by the time you've watched an episode like "Thank You" you find yourself looking up Adventure Time Art sources on the web for hours!

This is an older article (from February this year) but in case you haven't seen it I thought it worth a read, particularly as the TV series of Once Upon A Time and Grimm make this a hot topic at the moment.

It discusses how retelling fairy tales is changing with many recent and upcoming movies as examples.
Here's a quote:

The reinvention of fairy tales for the movies is nothing new, but this current trend neatly dovetails with the desire to cater to a smart, young female audience with increasing financial clout, an audience that wants stories where our protagonists go into the dark and scary woods and come out the other side as women.

I received an update* from the lovely people who put together the amazing Re-enchantment website and DVD that I posted on recently:

Buy a copy of the Re-enchantment DVD before the end of 2011 and receive a FREE set of six collector postcards – each depicting a scene from the iconic fairy tales featured in Re-enchantment: Red Riding Hood, Bluebeard, Hansel and Gretel, Cinderella, Rapunzel and Snow White.

6 Postcard Set from Re-enchantment

You can order the DVD HERE. (Australia-based customers can order HERE.)

Nice deal, right? I can't wait for mine to arrive!

Need a refresher on why this is a highly recommended purchase? Check out the website with interactive online documentary HERE!

One thing I didn't mention in my previous post is that the website is VERY EASY to navigate. No computer expertise is required - just point and click on things that interest you. :)

Snow White Re-enchantment postcard

* Note: If you tried ordering before and came across glitches, I've also been informed that all those are now fixed and everything is working fine for ordering now, both in Australia and everywhere else.